Trenching glossary: the words you'll actually hear

The short answer

Trenching vocabulary comes from four places at once: the launch mechanics (bonding curve, market cap, graduation), the contract itself (mint authority, honeypot, rug pull), execution (slippage, priority fee, sniper), and the culture around it (degen, alpha, exit liquidity). Below are the ones worth knowing first, grouped so you can jump to the category you need.

Launch and market terms

Bonding curve

A pricing formula that sets a token's buy and sell price from on-chain reserves, before a traditional liquidity pool exists. See the full guide.

Market cap (MC)

Current price multiplied by circulating supply. On a fresh launch, this is usually the number a terminal displays most prominently.

Fully diluted valuation (FDV)

Current price multiplied by total supply, including tokens not yet in circulation. Can look far larger than market cap for supply-locked tokens.

Graduation / migration

The point where a bonding-curve token's liquidity moves to a standard DEX pool—on Pump.fun, this happens automatically at a set market cap.

Liquidity pool (LP)

The paired reserves (e.g., SOL and a token) that let an automated market maker quote a price and execute swaps.

LP locked / burned

Liquidity provider tokens held in a time-locked contract (locked) or sent to an unrecoverable address (burned) so the pool can't be drained on demand.

Dev wallet / dev holding

The wallet that created the token, and the share of supply it still holds. High dev holding late in a run is a common sell-pressure risk.

Floor

Slang for the lowest price a token has recently traded at—often used loosely, not as a technical support level.

ATH

All-time high price or market cap. "New ATH" means the token just traded above every prior high.

Holder count

The number of distinct wallets holding a nonzero balance. Rising holder count with flat concentration is generally healthier than a static count.

Contract and safety terms

These matter enough to get their own dedicated guide—see reading a contract for how to actually check each one.

Contract address (CA)

The on-chain address identifying a token's mint (Solana) or contract (EVM). The only reliable way to confirm you're looking at the real token.

Mint authority

The permission to create new supply. Active mint authority on a fixed-supply meme token is a serious red flag—see reading a contract.

Freeze authority

A Solana-specific permission that can lock a wallet's token account, blocking sales. Legitimate meme tokens almost never need it active.

Delegate / approval

Standing permission for another address to move tokens on your behalf—Solana's delegate mechanism, or an EVM ERC-20 approval. See revoking approvals.

Honeypot

A contract engineered so tokens can be bought but not sold, or sold only by the deployer's own wallets.

Rug pull

Any exit where the team or a coordinated group extracts value—draining liquidity, dumping a concentrated holding, or minting new supply—leaving buyers with an illiquid or worthless token.

Token-2022 / SPL

Solana's token program standards. Token-2022 adds optional extensions—like transfer fees or a permanent delegate—that carry their own risks if misused.

Execution and trading terms

Slippage

The gap between a quoted price and the price a trade actually fills at, caused by the market moving between quote and execution.

Priority fee / tip

An extra payment (Solana priority fee, Jito tip, or EVM priority fee) to increase the odds of fast inclusion in a block.

MEV

Maximal extractable value—profit block producers or bots can capture by reordering, inserting, or excluding transactions around yours.

Sniper / sniper bot

An automated buyer that submits a transaction the instant a token or pool becomes tradeable, often within the same block as launch.

Bundler

A tool or service that submits multiple wallets' buy transactions together, commonly used to acquire a large early share of a new launch.

Front-run

Placing a transaction ahead of a known pending one to profit from the price impact it will cause.

Position size

How much capital is committed to a single trade, usually expressed as a percentage of total trading capital. See position sizing.

Partial exit

Selling only a portion of a position—commonly to recover the initial cost basis while letting the remainder run.

Culture and slang

Understanding slang doesn't make it good advice. Most of these terms describe behavior worth recognizing in yourself, not behavior worth emulating.

Degen

Self-deprecating slang for someone taking on high, often poorly sized risk. Used descriptively, not as a strategy to aspire to.

Ape in

To buy quickly and with little research, usually driven by momentum or social pressure.

Diamond hands / paper hands

Holding through volatility (diamond hands) versus selling at the first sign of drawdown (paper hands)—neither is inherently correct; it depends on the plan made before entry.

KOL

Key opinion leader—an influencer whose posts can move a token's attention and price, sometimes as an undisclosed paid promotion.

CT

Crypto Twitter/X—the social feed where most trench discovery, hype, and disinformation circulates in real time.

Alpha

Information perceived as an edge—ranging from genuine early signal to recycled hype dressed up as insider knowledge.

Send it

Slang for executing a trade decisively, usually said in the moment of buying—carries no information about whether the trade is sound.

Exit liquidity

Later buyers whose purchases let earlier holders sell into demand. Being unaware you're the exit liquidity is a common way trenchers lose money.

Narrative

The story that gives buyers a reason to expect more buyers—a listing rumor, a news hook, a theme. In a market without cash flows, the narrative is the coordination mechanism.

Meta

The launch pattern currently winning on the launchpads—a specific animal, joke format, or aesthetic—copied at industrial speed until it stops working. Narrower and faster-cycling than a narrative.

CTO (community takeover)

A community assuming control of a token its original developer abandoned—new socials, new leadership, sometimes redirected creator fees. Also a launch profile in the Trenchables launcher.

Vamping

Launching or reviving a token to feed on a dying one's community and search traffic—the same ticker after a rug, the 'real' version of an abandoned coin. Ranges from legitimate revival to pure exit-liquidity harvesting; the supply table tells you which.

Where to go next

With the vocabulary in place, the next logical guides are bonding curves and launches for how a price forms in the first place, and position sizing for how much to risk once you understand what you're looking at.

Primary and official sources